Sunday, June 17, 2012

Writing on...writing

Bear with me this week because I really hit a wall as to
what to post today. I spent a good fifteen minutes staring at a blank computer screen
and imagining words just appearing there, as if by magic.

Ironic, because I’ve
had a really good week and the novel I’m working on is coming along quite
nicely. Blog posts, however, are always more of a challenge. Especially now
that I’ve decided to post every Sunday.

Last night, I gave up on my empty computer screen to stare
out the window. Where did other writers get their ideas from? Not for their
blogs, because they’re supposed to be easy, but for their novels. And since it
sounded like a dandy distraction from writing my blog post, I decided to look
up several of my favorite writers to see if they’ve answered that question.

Where do you get your ideas from?

Robert Holdstock, who wrote my favorite novel Mythago Wood, said in an interview, “Everything
grows. I have an idea, I have some characters in my head, and when I get an idea
of what it is I want to say, I start going for it. I do, I'm not afraid to say,
write out of chaos.”

Garth Nix, author of Sabriel,
states, “I think inspiration comes from all over the place...I doubt that it
varies depending on what you write, in a sense. It's all raw material that goes
into your head and you make up what you will.”

Neil Gaiman? (And yes, I always have to quote Neil because
he’s plain awesome) Neil says, “I make them up, out of my head. You get ideas
from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time.
The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're
doing it.”

I munched on these interviews for awhile and reflected on
where my ideas came from.

Mythology inspired me. I love mythology, all kinds of
mythology. The stories from different cultures are fascinating. Everything is
there, the antagonists, the protagonists, the life struggles, the magic and
intrigue. It’s like a treasure trove of ideas that have been filtered and
passed down through the ages to be shared.

Did I feel like writing a blog post
about mythology? Eh, not today. I thought some more.

Sometimes, I’d get ideas that came to me “out of the blue.” You
know it’s been an “out of the blue” day when I had notes scrawled all over my
hands and arms because I never seemed to have paper when I needed it. I checked
my arms and hands. Unfortunately, they were as blank as my computer screen.

There were other times when my dream people spoke to me. Have
you ever had a lucid dream that stuck with you for days or even weeks? Those
dreams are begging to be turned into stories. My personal challenge is when my
dream people chose to speak to me in a different language. And yes, that
happens often--since I was a kid, in fact. I know on some level
it’s a language, but I can’t understand what the heck they’re saying. I usually
spend the next day looking up words or a sentence that stuck in my head, spelling
it phonetically (which doesn’t always work). The last time this happened, I
spent hours trying to decipher a phrase and the closest I could come was, “pennipotenti
es volatilis per parietis” which seemed to be Latin for, “the birds are flying
through the wall.” Yep. My dream person must have been messing with me that night.
(It did lead me to taking a free online course to study Latin, however. If you’re
interested, I put the link at the end of this post.)

But if the translation of a dream phrase makes sense,
a story could come from that. I thought about my last dream. Something about
dyeing my hair blue and riding a train barefoot...we won’t even go there.

Reading interviews from various writers was interesting
though. I was happy to read that, they too, shared days in which blank computer
screens mocked them. Holdstock asserted that he liked to think of those days as
a “writer’s pause” and not a block. “The world is there, but sometimes the
words aren't. I don't try to overcome it.” Nice. I could relate to that.

Gaiman lucidly states, “Blaming “Writer’s Block” is
wonderful. It removes any responsibility from the person with the “block.” It
gives you something to blame, and it sounds fancy. But it’s probably more
honest to think of it as a combination of laziness, perfectionism and Getting
Stuck. If you’re being lazy, don’t be. If you’re being a perfectionist, don’t
be. And if you’re stuck, figure out where the story went off the rails, or what
you got wrong, or where you need to go deeper, or what you need to add to make
it work, and then start writing again.”

Wise words and a nice kick in the pants. I’ll have to refer
to that when I’m banging my head on my computer because I’ve deleted pages and
pages of text while lamenting that I’ve wasted six hours of my life.

Or trying to come up with something to write in my blog.

Seriously, though, if I have a writer’s block when writing
fiction, I usually sleep on it. By morning (or several mornings later)
something comes and it all makes sense again. Jumping on my trampoline and
running with my dog, those seem to work too but take more effort.

But it was Saturday night and I needed to come up with
something now,I whined to myself.

I turned my attention again to the blank computer screen and
began, “Bear with me this week because I really hit a wall…”

Tonight, my Latin speaking dream people will probably be
talking to me all night long--and maybe next week my post won’t be as difficult.

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About Me

Clarissa Johal is the bestselling author of The Lighthouse, Whispers in the Wood, Poppy, The Island, Voices, Struck and Between.
When she’s not listening to the ghosts in her head, she’s swinging from a trapeze, or taking pictures of gargoyles.

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